Remembering better times

One of the most frustrating thing about humans is that we’ll feel a particular
way—happy, sad, angry, annoyed—and then we’ll find excuses as to why we’re
feeling that way. If we’re feeling sad, it’s really hard to remember times
when you were happy. If we’re feeling annoyed, then the most minor things can
cause us to lose our cool, even if they’re things we’d hardly notice on better
days.

It’s pretty clear that for whatever you’re feeling, that’s what you’ll be good
at remembering. If you’re having a great time, you’ll be better at remembering
similar happy memories. If you’re hitting a particular difficulty, it’s much
too easy to remember all the other times you’ve hit the same difficulty.

Sometimes we recognise our feelings are transient. When we’re feeling hungry,
we know that’s a temporary state, even if it causes us to buy half the
supermarket when we go shopping. But if we’re feeling sad or lonely, then it’s
way too easy to think those are somehow permanent, because all the other
similar occasions are what easily spring to mind.

One of the real struggles here is that there’s an actual block in being able to
conjure up those other feelings. You might say, “I know I was feeling happy
last Thursday”, but if you’re feeling rotten right now, then you’re just stuck
with “knowing”, rather than “feeling”. That abstract knowledge might not make
you feel any better—in fact unless you’ve actually sat down to honestly
remember how you felt each day—you might not even remember that you were happy
last Thursday in the first place.

This, more than anything else, is why I track my moods. It’s why I journal my
experiences. My memory is biased, and records and journals are one of the few
ways of seeing how I actually felt at any given time. My challenge is to keep
them up to date; if I’m having a great time—and sometimes if I’m having an
awful time—then often they don’t get recorded, and I miss what are arguably
some of my most important records.

But even if you don’t track your moods and experiences, then at least remember
that if you’re feeling down, or angry, or frustrated, then your brain—and your
memory in particular—is going to actively mess with you. You may not be able to
stop that from happening, but having knowledge and insight may at least help
you make better choices than what you may have otherwise made.